two of them join us this morning, juno diaz and chris thile. welcome, and congratulations. >> thank you for having us. >> are you surprised? >> they gave us a little heads up, but then we're real surprised. >> and what does it mean? $500,000. >> well, the first thing that i thought, aside from i was sure that my band mates were pranking me. >> somebody made a mistake. >> this could still be part of the prank. they could have gotten they're like guess what, you got a macarthur. >> why is that so important to us? because it's who we are. >> i'm not sure how common it is. they had that list of top hundred books in america, that people should read. not a single one of them had anything to do with immigration. i mean -- >> i've interviewed a lot of novelists over the years whose first novel was about their experience of coming to america. >> sure. i think that there's something about shifting worlds, coming from one world to the next. that for a lot of people, it strikes a cord. even if you didn't come from another country, the idea of how do you ma